Stephen Gilberg (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
deckardcanine) wrote2009-11-16 04:26 pm
deckardcanine) wrote2009-11-16 04:26 pm
(no subject)
My Google problem at work has yet to be solved. Neither Malwarebytes nor Symantec can detect what's causing about half my clicks from Google result pages to be redirected to unrelated commercial sites, always with a squiggle icon next to the URL. The IT person who tried them said she'd research the issue; she has yet to get back to me. At a forumite's suggestion, I downloaded Microsoft Security Essentials -- but now I can't find the .exe file. Another forumite suggested I look for a suspiciously new file in the System 32 folder, but there are so darn many to search. The only other suggestion I got looks like it'll cost money.
As it happens, last Friday the Free Rice site started offering a toolbar to let you donate 2,500 grains of rice for every five searches. Between this feature and the Google problem, I gladly downloaded it and have had no such redirections since.
Unfortunately, the toolbar is buggy. After counting down from five searches to go (it doesn't register all of mine), it resets to five; after another five, it says "No Rewards Until Tomorrow." Once it said that before I'd even clicked that day, which makes me wonder what time the server is set to. At the right, it's supposed to count all the grains donated today, presumably not just by my actions as the numbers get into the hundreds of thousands -- except that it keeps resetting unpredictably to 0.
The other problem is that the engine is powered by Yahoo!. I'm getting reminders that it wasn't just peer pressure that made me switch to Google in college. At least it's not prone to obnoxious banner ads at the topic like I remember Yahoo! being.
And now there's yet another problem on my work computer: random pop-ups at random intervals. I wonder if the reputed insecurity of Yahoo! is to blame for that, even when I'm not using it at the moment. I hesitate to tell my IT folks, lest they be annoyed at me for having three difficult issues in less than two weeks and suspect that I've been misusing the computer.
As it happens, last Friday the Free Rice site started offering a toolbar to let you donate 2,500 grains of rice for every five searches. Between this feature and the Google problem, I gladly downloaded it and have had no such redirections since.
Unfortunately, the toolbar is buggy. After counting down from five searches to go (it doesn't register all of mine), it resets to five; after another five, it says "No Rewards Until Tomorrow." Once it said that before I'd even clicked that day, which makes me wonder what time the server is set to. At the right, it's supposed to count all the grains donated today, presumably not just by my actions as the numbers get into the hundreds of thousands -- except that it keeps resetting unpredictably to 0.
The other problem is that the engine is powered by Yahoo!. I'm getting reminders that it wasn't just peer pressure that made me switch to Google in college. At least it's not prone to obnoxious banner ads at the topic like I remember Yahoo! being.
And now there's yet another problem on my work computer: random pop-ups at random intervals. I wonder if the reputed insecurity of Yahoo! is to blame for that, even when I'm not using it at the moment. I hesitate to tell my IT folks, lest they be annoyed at me for having three difficult issues in less than two weeks and suspect that I've been misusing the computer.